On the Relationship Between Science and Religion

Theory, Measurement, and Early Evidence for the Psychological Mechanism

Dissertation Defense

Wednesday, 12 November 2025

Rizqy Amelia Zein

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Mario Gollwitzer

Chair of Social Psychology, LMU Munich

Theoretical Background

  • Barbour (1966, 1998, 2000, 2002) proposes that people can perceive science (S) and religion (R) as:
    • Conflict: inherently incompatible, then cannot mentally coexist.
    • Independence: separate domains or non-overlapping magisteria (Gould, 1999).
    • Dialogue: distinct but incomplete without each other.
    • Integration: a unified belief system with no categorical distinction.
  • Assumptions: one cannot fit people neatly into one taxon and they are situation-dependent characteristics (Barbour, 2002).
  • Perceptions of the relationship between S and R is defined as a mental schema for processing potentially competing S and R explanations, especially in situations in which both scientific and religious explanations are salient.
  • I will refer to this construct as ‘mental models’ later on.

Research Questions

Does Barbour’s taxonomy exist in reality? If so, why do people differ in their mental models?

The goal is to illustrate the underlying psychological mechanisms responsible for the formation of the mental models.

Pillar 1: Theory

If it exists, how can one systematically operationalize it for empirical research?

The goal is to quantify qualitative distinctions of the mental models.

Pillar 2: Measure

Then, what does it predict?

The goal is to investigate whether the mental models can predict how people evaluate the utility of specific scientific and religious explanations.

Pillar 3: Mechanistic Testing

Manuscript 1: Theory

Does Barbour’s taxonomy exist in reality? If so, why do people differ in their mental models?

Some Insights

Is the taxonomy real?

  • There is handful of evidence from qualitative studies.
  • Mental models have different names, but the most straightforward are suggested by Yasri et al (2013), which are Conflict, Compartment (= Independence), Complementary (= Dialogue) and Consonance (= Integration).
  • Context-Switch is an addition, which represents a pragmatic strategy of an underlying conflict belief by flexibly switching between S and R depending on the social situations.

Why people differ?

  • Cognitive elements: cognitive flexibility, epistemic belief.

  • Motivational elements: social identity, political ideology, moral belief, epistemic needs and motives.

  • Differences in cognitive and motivational aspects here pave the way for explanatory coexistence.

  • Explanatory coexistence can occur because S and R have differential utility (Davoodi & Lombrozo, 2022) and thus are processed differently (Van Leeuwen, 2014).

In order to hold “non-conflict” beliefs (i.e., compartment, complementary, and consonance), individuals should be cognitively flexible and motivated to reconcile; otherwise, they adopt “conflict” beliefs (i.e, conflict & context-switch)

Manuscript 2: Measurement

How can one systematically operationalize Barbour’s taxonomy for empirical research?

Rationale

  • There have been some efforts to operationalize Barbour’s taxonomy, but these studies violated Barbour’s most important assumption by assigning participants to one of the mental models.
  • One way to operationalize the taxonomy is to assume that mental models do not only differ in their kind but also in their degree of conflict compatibility.

Rationale

  • There have been some efforts to operationalize Barbour’s taxonomy, but these studies violated Barbour’s most important assumption by assigning participants to one of the mental models.
  • One way to operationalize the taxonomy is to assume that mental models do not only differ in their kind but also in their degree of conflict compatibility.
  • We developed a novel measure that mirrors theoretical and empirical descriptions of each mental model.
  • We performed one pilot and two studies across three (N = 2,920) and one sample (N = 1,197).
  • Since mental models are culturally embedded (Johnson, et al., 2020; Rios & Aveyard, 2019; Rios & Roth, 2020), the scale might contain a systematic cultural bias, so we performed a differential item functioning (DIF) analysis.
  • Discriminant, convergent, and criterion-related validity were also tested.

Results

  • Scale data in four samples showed that the construct is unidimensional and bipolar.

Results

  • Scale data in four samples showed that the construct is unidimensional and bipolar.
    • ..but the Context-Switch was closer to compatibility than conflict.
  • participants perceived more conflict than at same trait level by ~0.4SD.
  • The construct was conceptually distinct from Belief in Science (Farias et al., 2013) (\(\rho^2\) = .46 , .25 ) and similar to Leicht et al.’s (2021) scale (\(\rho^2\) = .57 .54 ), but sufficient unshared variance still left.
  • Strong-to-moderate correlations between religiosity, religious identity, and religious upbringing with higher compatibility perceptions in and samples.
  • Small-to-moderate correlations between atheist identity (both in and ) and science identity (only ) with higher conflict perception.
  • Close to zero correlation between agnostic identity with conflict/compatibility perceptions, both in and samples.

Perceptions of the relationship between S and R are unidimensional, bipolar construct, with mental models representing certain regions along this continuum.

Manuscript : Mechanistic Testing

What does having different mental models predict?

Rationale & Theory

Goal System Theory (GST)

  • S and R are means to achieve epistemic goals (i.e., “to explain why things happen”).
  • Presenting scientific and religious explanations together (as multiple means) leads to reduced perceived utility of both compared to presenting them alone, or the dilution effect (Jackson et al., 2024; Kruglanski et al., 2011).
  • GST predicts that: the number of available explanations determines how epistemically valuable people perceive these explanations to be.

Motivated Reasoning

  • People engage in biased reasoning, preferring explanations that are consistent with their prior beliefs (Kunda, 1990).
  • Motivated reasoning predicts that:
    • Moderate reliance on both S and R reflects underlying non-conflict beliefs (i.e., compartment, context-switch, complementary, and consonance).
    • High reliance on either S or R reflects an underlying conflict belief.

Design

  • A within-subject experiment (N = 719)
  • Participants were randomly presented with one (scientific or religious), two (always one scientific and one religious), and four (always two scientific and two religious) of three existential-related incidents: flood, war, and climate crisis.
  • The order of both incidents and number of explanations was counterbalanced; each condition only appeared once.
  • Then, asked participants to rate each explanation presented to them for their epistemic utility, and measured their perceptions of the relationship between S and R, and religiosity.

Results

  • No main effect of n of explanation (1 vs. 2 vs. 4) and no interaction effect between n of explanation and type of explanation (S vs. R).
  • Conflict believers rated religious explanations as less useful than non-conflict believers (d = -0.71).
  • Scientific explanations were rated consistently regardless of whether participants believed in a conflict or non-conflict (d = 0.001).
  • Non-religious rated religious explanations as less useful than religious participants (d = -1.02).
  • Scientific explanations were rated similarly regardless of participants’ religiosity (d = 0.09).

Perceptions of the relationship between S and R predict how individuals evaluate the utility of religious explanations, but not scientific explanations.

Some Takeaways

Conclusion
  • People’s perceptions on the relationship between S and R emerge through identifiable cognitive and motivational processes.
  • These perceptions are mapped on to different regions of a unidimensional, bipolar construct, that is culturally embedded.
    • Context-Switch is closer to compatibility than conflict, different from what was initially suspected.
  • This general perception of the relationship between S and R only predicts how people evaluate the utility of religious explanations, and not scientific explanations.
Contributions
  • Offering a systematic operationalization of Barbour’s taxonomy.
  • Providing an integrative, yet descriptive, psychological mechanism underlying the mental models and early evidence for what they predict.
Limitations
  • No examination of boundary conditions, but it may be possible with computational modelling.
  • Only focused on the general perceptions – did not tap into domain/issue/topic-specific perceptions.

Thank you 🙏

Project Supported by:

References

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List of Appendices (1 & 2)

Manuscript 1

Manuscript 2

Manuscript 2

List of Appendices (3)

Manuscript 3

Original Flowchart

Revised Flowchart

Qualitative Studies Barbour’s Taxonomy

Learning Sciences

Basel, Harms, Prechtl, Weiß, & Rothgangel (2014); Borgerding, Deniz, & Anderson (2017); Dodick, Dayan, & Orion (2010); Fysh & Lucas (1998); Hokayem & BouJaoude (2008); Mansour (2011); Mansour (2015); Pearce, Stones, Reiss, & Mujtaba (2021); Scheitle (2011); Shipman, Brickhouse, Dagher, & Letts (2002); Stones, Pearce, Reiss, & Mujtaba (2020); Taber, Billingsley, Riga, & Newdick (2011); Taşkın (2014); Yasri & Mancy (2012); Yasri & Mancy (2016); Alanazi (2025); Fahrurrosi, Sholihah, Hamid, Fadhilah, & Marzuki (2025); Riwanda, Abdurrohim, Widiyati, & Pranajaya (2025); Woolley et al. (2023)

Sociology, Religious Studies

Baker (2012); Ecklund, Park, & Sorrell (2011); Ecklund & Park (2009); Elsdon-Baker (2015); Hanley, Bennett, & Ratcliffe (2014); Hill, Jones, Kaden, & Catto (2019); Kaden (2025); Konnemann, Asshoff, & Hammann (2016); Longest & Uecker (2021); Scheitle & Corcoran (2021); Vaidyanathan, Johnson, Prickett, & Howard Ecklund (2016)

Scale Items

Leicht et al (2021)

Correlation Table Study 2 DE

Correlation Table Study 2 USA

Model Fit Pilot + Study 1

Model Fit Study 2

Item Location Study 2

ESSD Study 2

PCA Plot Pilot (DE)

PCA Plot Study 1 (DE)

PCA Plot Study 2 DE

Identity Scale

Scale Perceived Utility

Correlation Table

Model Parameter n_exp * type_exp * conflict

Simple Simple Effects n_exp * type_exp * conflict

Plot n_exp * type_exp * conflict

Model Parameter n_exp * type_exp * religiosity

Simple Simple Effects n_exp * type_exp * religiosity

Plot n_exp * type_exp * conflict

COR 1

COR 2

COR 3

COR 4